Sunday, February 16, 2014

Ten Days of Real Food!

I find it encouraging that this woman decided to learn more about the food she ate and was feeding her family and then led her family on a journey to see what would happen if they cut out all processed foods for a definite period of time. She's done two documented 100 days of real food pledges: "The Original" and "100 Days on a Budget." I'm currently reading through her blog posts on the latter pledge.

She encourages readers who might find giving up processed foods for 100 days intimidating to try a 10 day pledge. Seemed doable.

As I shared in my last post, one of my goals for 2014 is to gradually make my way to eating a mostly (85%) whole foods, unprocessed diet. I woke up one Monday morning in late January and thought "What am I waiting on?! I'm taking the 10 days of real food pledge today!"

I didn't follow the rules perfectly. But I kept trying. Because I'm usually the type to quit when I have a slip-up or for some reason end up not following a plan exactly, the fact that I kept trying even though I couldn't do the pledge perfectly is significant for me.

"Real food" included meat( preferably local and organic), dairy (preferably organic), fruits and veggies, whole grains, nuts, and seeds, and all the wonderful things you can make with these unprocessed ingredients. It excluded refined sugars, refined grains, deep fried foods, and all food products made from those ingredients. Store bought/ packaged items where allowed as long as they had no more than 5 ingredients and all the ingredients where whole (i.e 100% whole grain bread, pasta etc). Raw Honey and Maple Syrup were the only sweeteners allowed [in moderation]. The pledge permitted alcohol.

For my heart you see...

The rules and the entire Real Food deal are best explained on the website. I highly recommend checking it out and reading the blog posts. The site also has ton of recipes and resources for the real-food curious!

The blue corn tortilla chips were a no-no

I'll keep trying the pledge until I can do the 10 days perfectly (maybe one day I'll make it to a 100). But for now I'm pleased with how much healthy food I consumed (and am still consuming) consistently.